


such sweet sorrow

by macaronidoodles



Category: Crown of Candy, Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26672236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macaronidoodles/pseuds/macaronidoodles
Summary: “Lazuli!” her mother says, voice thunderous. “Are you listening?”“No,” Lazuli says, blinking away the overlapping visions of the betrothed she has never met in a white wedding dress, in black mourner’s garb. (She is radiant in both.) “Excuse me.”(Against all her best intentions, Lazuli Rocks falls in love.)
Relationships: Amethar Rocks & Citrina Rocks & Lazuli Rocks & Rococoa Rocks & Sapphria Rocks, Caramelinda Rocks/Lazuli Rocks, Citrina Rocks & Lazuli Rocks
Comments: 18
Kudos: 36





	such sweet sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S FINALLY DONE. i started writing this fic literally the night cara/lazuli was confirmed and it spiralled way way out of control, as you can probably tell from the word length. hopefully it's at least marginally legible!
> 
> title from romeo and juliet, which i understand is very pretentious but whatever, i'm a sucker for starcrossed lovers. also, this was titled this before the dropout newsletter from a couple weeks ago was released okay don't @ me

Her parents tell her the news of her engagement over breakfast one morning. She’s only half-listening, nose in a book as always, trying to work out if she’s already read it already in this timeline or in a future one. The words double, blur, and so she misses the part in the conversation where she’s supposed to reply.

“Lazuli?” her father asks gently. (Always so gentle. It’s going to be a problem.) “Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” she says, shutting the book. (She’ll have to – she will – she was always going to – read it later.) “I am married. Am going to be, I mean.”

The king regards her with his usual confusion. She forgives him, or will, in time; she understands she is a confusing person.

“To Lady Caramelinda of House Merengue,” her mother says. “She is arriving in a few months. You accept this?”

She nods, keeping her face neutral. Caramelinda. Yes, House Merengue makes the most sense for the alliances, will strengthen their armed forces, secure the borders to the east... This makes sense, and now it simply is, was always going to happen, no matter how much she wishes in this moment that the tides of time were different.

Of all her possible spouses Lady Caramelinda is the one Lazuli has most dreaded, because of all her possible spouses, Caramelinda is the one who is going to love her.

Her mother is still talking, but she isn’t listening. She’s heard it all before, different names, different timelines, the same everything-else: family, duty, honour. Instead, Lazuli tunes out and begins the difficult task of sorting through the timelines. There are small ripples and big ones and this is the latter, crashing waves of images that flood out her other senses and whose origin and placement in time she must investigate closely. It’s an arduous, ongoing task, but the sooner she starts the better. The one constant in her life (lives) is that there’s never enough _time_.

“Lazuli!” her mother says, voice thunderous. “Are you listening?”

“No,” Lazuli says, blinking away the overlapping visions of the betrothed she has never met in a white wedding dress, in black mourner’s garb. (She is radiant in both.) “Excuse me.”

She retreats from the table to the safety of the library where she can decipher the future in peace. Rococoa catches up with her as she leaves the dining hall, looking furious for reasons Lazuli does not have the brain space to examine, and places a yet-unscarred hand upon Lazuli’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“For what?” Lazuli says.

“For all this – bullshit! That you have to get married to a person you’ve never even _met_.”

“We have met. Or, we will,” Lazuli says. “It’s all the same to me.”

Rococoa looks confused. Lazuli forgives her more easily. “What – okay, time stuff, whatever. But aren’t you mad?”

She shrugs. “It’s the logical thing to do. It strengthens the alliances. I don’t mind.”

Rococoa still seems concerned, but of all Lazuli’s siblings she understands duty the most. She’s the eldest, born with the shadow of the crown over her head, even though as Lazuli sorts through the timelines there seem to be a worrying number where she never lives to wear it. “I know, but it’s still shitty, Laz. You can admit when something’s unfair.”

Lazuli doesn’t have time to think about unfair. “Thank you, Cocoa,” she says, and shuts the library door.

***

The first time she sees her betrothed in the present is on a bright sunny day, hot enough to make the cola river steam and the gummied bricks of the ramparts melted and sticky. Lazuli is _supposed_ to be downstairs in her finest robes, the picture of a stately princess, but the night before she gets caught up in a particularly tricky spell and stays up fiddling with material components and furiously scribbling until the meeps begin to sing. She only meant to close her eyes for a minute, but now there’s a rough hand on her shoulder shaking her awake from the slumber she must have fallen into.

“Laz!” one of her sisters – Sapphria, Lazuli registers blearily as she lifts her head – says, her voice low and urgent. “Laz, you overslept, mom’s furious - the Merengues are arriving any minute, you gotta wake up!”

“Ah,” Lazuli says, sitting up straight. “Shit. Fuck. Shit.”

“Yeah, shit,” Sapphria snaps. “Come _on,_ we’ve gotta go –”

Lazuli lets her younger sister pull her to her feet, fumbling for her glasses as she’s yanked away through the doors of her secret study and into the corridors of Castle Candy. Amethar is lingering outside, peering out of the window, and spins around panicked as his siblings emerge.

“They just got here!” he says, falling into step beside them.

Lazuli and Sapphria swear in tandem. The three of them tear down the stairs of the tower and across the courtyard, past the stables and the confused stable-hands, back into the main castle tower and are almost to the royal family’s suite scot free when Lazuli wakes up enough to realise what timeline she’s in and pulls up short just before she barrels into Lady Caramelinda of House Merengue.

“Oh!” the Lady says, and laughs a little. “Hello.”

Unfortunately, Lazuli’s siblings aren’t as gifted in the divinatory arts as she is. Before Lazuli can say anything, first Sapphria and then Amethar slam into her and the four of them all go toppling to the ground.

Amethar and Sapphria roll off quickly roll off and begin squabbling over whose fault it was, but Lazuli is too flustered to move from where she is lying. Which is, _directly on top of her fiancé._ The Lady Merengue also seems shocked, her cheeks, mere inches away from Lazuli’s face, flushed a deep brown.

“Ah, hmm, that wasn’t supposed to – but it did, so it was – regardless, I should have – my sincerest apologies, my lady,” Lazuli stammers, and scrambles to her feet in as dignified a manner as she can manage, offering Lady Caramelinda her hand.

“Oh, no, it was me, I wasn’t looking where I was going -”

“No, no, it was my fault entirely –”

“Really, I should have been more careful.” Lady Caramelinda gets to her feet. “But perhaps we should each stop taking the blame, or else we’ll be here all day.”

“Yes, well,” Lazuli says. She’s never paid much heed to her mother’s court training, but even so she’s pretty sure it wouldn’t cover this situation. “I apologise, anyway, uh…?” She trails off, unsure how to address her fiancee.

“Cara- Lady Caramelinda. Of House Merengue,” she says, curtsying as soon as she’s on her feet. “And I presume you are Archmage Lazuli.”

“Yes,” Lazuli says. “And we are. Hmm. We are to be married.”

“So it would seem,” Caramelinda replies.

Lazuli nods, unsure how to proceed. Behind them Amethar and Sapphria are still arguing, unaware of their sister’s crisis. She calls behind her, a tight smile on her face, “Amethar! Sapphria!”

They stop, and Sapphria sweeps over, plastering on her court smile. “Lady Caramelinda!” she says, curtseying. “Please accept my sincerest apologies, my oafish brother doesn’t know how to look where he’s going –”

“Bullshit!” Amethar, never one for manners, cuts in. “You ran into her first, not me –”

“Amethar, we have a guest –”

“Yeah, and we shouldn’t lie to her, it was clearly your fault –”

“Was not!”

“Was too!”

“Um. Siblings.” Lazuli hisses, mortified. Where on Calorum is Rococoa or Citrina when you need them? “Please stop.”

“But Amethar–”

“But Sapphria–”

“Alright, enough!”

The Rocks siblings turn from their argument to Caramelinda, no longer quite as meek looking. She places her hands on her hips, and continues, “What happened was unfortunate, but no was hurt, and casting blame around will help none of us. I think it would be beneficial for all parties if we forget this ever happened, and return to our rooms before we are discovered.”

Sapphria and Amethar look at Lazuli. Lazuli is looking (will look, ever after, against all her best intentions) at Lady Caramelinda, a small smile quirking at the corners of her mouth. “That seems wise. Thank you, my lady.”

“You’re quite welcome, Archmage,” she says, curtseying again, with just the hint of a laughter on her lips. “I would hurry along. The good queen Pamelia seemed a little irate, when I saw her last.”

Lazuli winces. “Ah. Farewell, then.”

She bows deeply in return, and then turns and starts walking back to her room. Amethar and Sapphria follow behind mutely, which is an impressive feat, to say the least.

Amethar peels off when they reach her room to let their parents know Lazuli has been retrieved and to soothe their anger as best he can before she arrives, whilst Sapphria stays to help her into her dress.

“I like her,” she says, as she laces up the back, and Lazuli can hear the smile in her voice.

“Yes,” Lazuli says, trying unsuccessfully to get rid of her own smile. “I do, too.”

In the mirror across the room, Caramelinda is leaning – will lean – down to kiss her goodnight. Lazuli bites her lip and looks away.

***

Lazuli does not see much of her betrothed after they are more formally introduced, busying herself with teaching magic to the various students she has collected over the years and talking to Cumulous about the Spinning Star and researching forgotten arcane arts and always, always keeping one eye on the future. (There’s never, she thinks, has thought often, enough _time_.) But her sisters have persuaded her that she should get to know the person she will spend the rest of her life with, and so one afternoon she leaves the library early and heads for the Merengues’ quarters.

“Oh, Archmage,” Caramelinda says, when her maidservant opens the door. She curtseys. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Ah. Lazuli has not thought this far ahead. Or rather, she was thinking _too_ far ahead, and forgot to think about the bit in the middle. “Oh. Hmm,” she says. “I was wondering if you would like to, uh… go for a walk?”

( _That’s what lovers do, right? Go on walks about the grounds?_ She panic- _messages_ Sapphria. 

_Lazuli? Yeah, I guess so,_ her sister replies. _Please don’t tell me you call her your lover though. Bleugh._ )

“I would love to,” Caramelinda says, jolting Lazuli out of her attempts to come up with a cutting retort, and closes the door behind her. “Lead the way, Archmage.”

“Oh. Good. Yes,” Lazuli says, awkwardly offering Caramelinda her arm. “This way.”

They walk together through the corridors of Castle Candy and out into the grounds in silence. Caramelinda keeps opening her mouth as if to say something, and then closing it, overcome with nerves, which only serves to make Lazuli more nervous.

Also, frankly, she has no idea where she’s going. They’ve been walking back and forth along the castle walls as Lazuli tries to remember the best way into the woods – she really needs to get out of the library more – when an idea strikes her suddenly.

She stops and turns to Caramelinda. “Can you keep a secret?” she says.

Caramelinda, still a little overcome with nerves, merely nods, but she seems excited.

“Good. Follow me.” She strides back into the castle courtyard, down a side alley, and looks about furtively before pushing at the third brick from the top. For a moment nothing happens, and she worries she may have miscounted, but then the hidden door swings open and Lazuli gestures for Caramelinda to enter.

Behind the high walls is a small garden bursting with vibrant colour: gummy rose bushes in every flavour, sherbet daisies entwined around wafer trellises, orange and mint chocolate trees dripping in the heat of the setting sun. Unlike the rest of the court gardens or the little kitchen allotment the cooks keep, however, most of the plants in the beds grow tangled and wild, some flowering in deep reds and purples, some growing sickly yellow and green fruit. Sharp sugar crystal thorns and patches of sour berries further emphasise the toxicity of a few especially deadly species enclosed in a glass greenhouse in the centre of the grove.

Caramelinda turns to Lazuli, her eyes bright. “This is – wow – what – where are we?”

“The garden of Queen Opal Rocks,” Lazuli says, relieved to settle from the awkward role of courter into the far more comfortable position of educator. “My great-great-great grandmother. She was an excellent botanist and alchemist. Many of the plants here are extremely rare, and are key ingredients in certain alchemical solutions and poisons.”

“Hence the secrecy, I presume,” Caramelinda says.

“Exactly,” Lazuli leads Caramelinda down the candy cane-striped path in the direction of the lemonade pond she vaguely remembers. “Only the monarchs and the gardeners are supposed to know about it. They told us all when we turned eighteen. My sisters and I had already discovered it for ourselves when we were younger, of course, much to the gardener’s chagrin.”

Caramelinda laughs, a lovely, tinkling sound that seems right at home with the meeps tweeting in the treetops. “Oh, I can imagine.” She pauses. “We met, you know. When we were younger.”

“Oh,” Lazuli says, and freezes, trying to cast her mind back. Most of her childhood memories are vague, her thoughts always tangled up with the future rather than the past. “I –”

“You don’t remember,” Caramelinda shakes her head. “Of course you don’t, I’m being silly. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“My lady, I’m the one who should apologise,” Lazuli says. “I’m sorry I don’t remember. The curse of the academic is a scattered mind. Perhaps if you reminded me?”

Caramelinda takes a moment to collect herself as they stroll further down the path. “There was a ball, here at Castle Candy,” she says, slowly. “It was the first time I’d ever left home. I was nine. They had a little section for all the children. We – danced together.” She blushes and ducks her head. “It’s silly, I’m sure you’ve danced with hundreds of young nobles –”

“No,” Lazuli says, the image taking shape in her mind. “No, I remember now. My mother made me wear this awful gown and took away my books, so I’d pay attention.” She chuckles, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I hated it. If I remember correctly, dancing with you was the only thing that made me smile all night.”

Caramelinda blushes deeper. “Oh. I – oh.”

Lazuli feels her own cheeks grow hot. She coughs, and starts pointing out the different plants in the herb garden and describing their various alchemical uses to deflate the tension in the air. Caramelinda takes this in stride, nodding along and asking insightful questions that put Lazuli at ease as she happily rambles onwards. Lazuli loves her sisters, loves all the various students she has and will collect, but it is rare to find someone who listens as well as Caramelinda does.

 _Don’t get too comfortable,_ the sensible part of her mind tells her: but the sun is setting, and she is caught up in the joy of sharing knowledge, and she does not heed the warning.

“Archmage,” Caramelinda says, carefully, when Lazuli pauses to take a breath, “Can I ask – when you talk about alchemy, do you mean magic?”

“Ah,” Lazuli says. “A common misconception. I am not a politician or fear-mongering Bulbian: when I talk about magic, I call it by its name. Queen Opal was, as far as I’m aware, an alchemist and nothing more.”

“Oh,” Caramelinda shrinks. “I meant no insult -

“And none was received,” Lazuli assures her. “I understand near the borders and the lands beyond Candia magic is seen as dangerous and must be talked about surreptitiously. But you have nothing to fear from magic and nothing to fear from me. If you want to know about it, just ask.”

Caramelinda hesitates, and then says, “Can you show me?” 

Lazuli lights up. There’s a bench next to the lemonade pond, and she gestures to Caramelinda sit down. “Firstly: since we are to be married, perhaps we should dispense with the formalities. Archmage is my title, Lazuli is my name.”

“Lazuli, then.” Caramelinda smiles.

Lazuli smiles in return. “Well, my lady, there are several different kinds of magic. It can be used to transport,” – she vanishes and appears behind Caramelinda – “Or disguise,” – she waits until Caramelinda has spotted her again and then turns invisible – “Or create illusions!” She drops concentration on invisibility and creates an illusion of two meeps flying up into the sunset behind them. “As well as a great many other things, though admittedly most spells aren’t quite so flashy.”

Caramelinda watches in awe. “Wow,” she breathes. “That’s – amazing. Wow.”

Lazuli gives a little bow. “Anytime, my lady.”

“Since we are to be married, I believe we can dispense with formalities.” She grins. “Caramelinda. Or Cara, for short.”

Lazuli nods. “Of course, Caramelinda,” she says, and faux-curtsies.

“Also,” Caramelinda holds out her hand and screws her face up, and a little blue ball of light appears out of nowhere. It flickers and multiplies, expanding outwards to envelop the two of them. She raises an eyebrow. “Your turn to keep a secret.”

Lazuli looks around her in wonder. _“Fascinating,_ ” she breathes, coming to sit next to Caramelinda. “What spell is this? It’s not any I’ve learned.”

“I don’t know if it’s a spell, I just can _do_ it.” Caramelinda says. “It’s nowhere near as impressive as your magic, of course –“

“Innate magic?” Lazuli says. “Nonsense. That’s _incredibly_ impressive. Do you know how long it takes me to learn a spell? Days and days, sometimes, and for you to be able to do it, just like that! How wonderful!”

Caramelinda blushes again. “Coming from you, that means – well, everything. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” Lazuli says, giddy with new discovery. “Oh, you’ll have to tell me _everything -_ I know there are various innate spellcasters along the sweetening path, but to have the opportunity to meet one! Would you mind if I took notes?”

“Of course,” Caramelinda says. “I was, well, when they told me we were engaged – I was actually hoping you would teach me. I’m not very powerful, yet, but I’d like to learn. Is it very different?”

“I have no idea!” Lazuli says. “Ha! How exciting. We can learn together.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Cara says.

Lazuli grins, a little out of breath, and realises suddenly just how close she is to her betrothed, her hand on Caramelinda’s as she maintains the spell. The lights hang around them like gummy glow worms, lighting up the dusk. She can feel the warmth of Caramelinda’s skin and the light hum of her magic: and her own skin, her own magic, infused into the spell entirely by accident, working in tandem to keep it going longer than she thinks should be possible.

Caramelinda’s eyes are trained on hers, a strange, magical glint reflected in them.

(And in those reflections she sees the future, the future where there will be fire and bloodied hands and a grief so great it could shatter the sky. There is a tragedy in the making, and Lazuli is certain she will not be its only victim.)

The lights evaporate with her smile. She stands, snatching her hand away from Caramelinda’s as if it has bitten her.

“Lazuli?” Caramelinda asks, concerned.

“I –” Lazuli pauses, collects herself. “It’s growing late, and I have business to attend to, still,” she says, not meeting her eyes. “We should return to the Castle.”

Caramelinda frowns, but quickly regains her composure. “Of course,” she says, and stands.

They walk back to the castle in silence. Lazuli distracts herself with other things, other theories she’s been working on, ways to prevent the ever-looming futures from crashing down on Candia. She halts only briefly outside Caramelinda’s door.

“Well, goodnight, Arch- Lazuli,” Caramelinda says.

“Goodnight,” Lazuli says. She’s about to leave, she _should_ leave, but her curiosity wins out against her better judgement. She sighs, and turns back. “Caramelinda?”

“Yes?” her betrothed says, halfway in the door.

“Come to the library tomorrow morning. For your magic lesson.” Lazuli says.

Caramelinda looks pleasantly surprised. “I’ll be there.”

“Good,” Lazuli nods. “Goodnight.”

In the privacy of her room, she looks at herself deep in the mirror. She wonders, sometimes, if the haunted look in her eyes is as obvious to everyone else as it is to her.

“What are you _doing_?” she mutters.

In the reflection Caramelinda appears again, older, hair unbraided, a sleepy smile on her face. Lazuli squeezes her eyes shut.

***

Lazuli is twelve when she starts studying magic in secret, thirteen when she begins to dream of the future. She wakes one night with the image of the ruined bodies of her siblings seared behind her eyelids and runs, weeping and inconsolable, to Rococoa’s room. Her sister rubs circles in the small of her back and whispers that she is safe, that their family is safe, nothing is wrong – _but it will be_ , Lazuli sobs, _it will be_.

 _They have names for people like you, in Fructera,_ her mother says, the next day. _Mad. Heretic. Witch. Take care, daughter._

Lazuli knows this. Knows the Bulbian sermons, Citrina’s readings, the dance everyone does to avoid mentioning magic when they travel to her mother’s homeland. And she knows, too, the fear in Cocoa’s eyes when she recounted how the Vegetanians would break down the doors of Castle Candy and drag them all to the guillotine, how the Ceresians wouldn’t bother with the ceremony of a public execution but would slit their throats as they lay sleeping.

But she also knows that the things she can do are _wondrous._ Lightning at her fingertips, illusions woven by her words alone, the future whispering its secrets in her ear. That she can use them to change the horrible things she sees in the future, to change the _world_ , if she wants.

So though she nods to her mother, lips tight, and does not speak of this again, she keeps working. Lazuli is a quick learner, and she will learn to use the visions, the fear, as a tool. A map, if it showed only the paths to avoid and left the navigator to puzzle out the correct route alone. And, well, she is (will never be) one to leave a puzzle unsolved.

Slowly, carefully, Lazuli learns, grows smarter and wiser and more powerful: and inch by inch, brick by brick, she builds walls up around her, higher than the highest tower of Castle Candy where she goes to study the stars. She cannot shield her mind from the horrors of the world but she can hide her heart up here, out of reach, and when the tower inevitably comes thundering down around her she hopes she’ll be the only one trapped beneath the rubble.

***

“What is it like,” Caramelinda asks, midway through a magic lesson, “To see the future?”

Lazuli blinks, her mind caught up in the abjurative theory she’s teaching her fiancé. “What?”

“What’s it like?” Caramelinda says, leaning forward across the table. Her hair is coming loose from its usual neat braid, and the light through the window behind her frames her head in a halo, prettier than any image of a Bulbian saint.

Lazuli pushes her glasses up her nose. “I suppose there’s no point asking you how you know that.”

Caramelinda shrugs. “You talk in different tenses, sometimes. And most of the research of yours I’ve seen is divinatory. It makes sense.”

“All excellent observations.” Lazuli says. Cara is such a quick-witted and diligent student, and kind and very attractive and – she shuts down the train of thought before she becomes more flustered. “Well. I can’t tell you about the future, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s far too dangerous.”

Caramelinda looks a tiny bit disappointed, but shakes her head. “No, I imagined that was the case, or you would talk about it more. I just… how does it feel? Does it hurt?

“Oh.” Lazuli pauses to consider. “Yes. No. It doesn’t hurt. I don’t think. Um. It’s like… Well. It feels… it feels. Oh. Hmm.”

In truth, she’s never really thought about how it _feels_. Visions of the future are just something that happen to her, now and then (though with increasing frequency, in recent weeks. Or months. Years? She’s unsure. A side effect of living in several times at once. She should check her notes.)

“Lazuli?” Cara says, gently.

“Hmm? Oh. Apologies.” Lazuli blinks again, drawing her mind back to the question. Cara has put her hand on her hand and that nearly causes her to short-circuit again. “I, ah. I suppose I’ve never really thought about what it’s like. It just… is.”

Cara is still holding her hand. Lazuli does not want to let go, but she clears her throat and withdraws. Cara takes the hint, and leans back. “Well, I’ll let you think about it.” She looks up, smiles. “I’d like to understand, if you’d let me.”

Lazuli ponders the question for a few days. It’s something she’s never stopped to consider before, but so obvious now that Cara’s pointed it out that she can’t believe she hasn’t already. In her study, she lists out the various sensations that accompany her visions: tingling fingertips, visual and sometimes auditory hallucinations, headaches, not always but frequently enough to be irritating. She looks at the page for a while, scribbles it out. Interesting, but distilling it to a laundry-list of symptoms makes it sounds like a disease, and can’t quite convey how all-consuming it is. Cara prefers metaphor in learning anyway, she’s found, so she flicks to a fresh page and starts over.

What is it like? Ocean waves crashing over her head? Trying to read a book in another language with all the pages out of order? A hall of mirrors, reflecting endlessly back on themselves?

In the end, she settles for a storm.

“It’s like lightning,” she tells Cara. “The visions strike unexpectedly. They are loud, and bright, but they happen infrequently. What comes after is the echoes, the consequences of the big flash of action.”

“Like thunder,” Caramelinda says, closing her book, already following Lazuli’s train of thought without her having to slow down and start from the beginning.

“Like thunder,” Lazuli repeats. “These images – usually images, anyway, but sometimes sounds, sometimes just feelings – are disparate. I have to work out how to connect them to the lightning strike. Which is supremely difficult, because they’re just snatches of times with no context.” She pauses, sighs. “And also it’s not really like that at all, because it’s happening all the time and there are lots of flashes and it’s always changing based on what other people do, and my seeing actually influences everything, too, because just by observing the future I’ll have twisted the shape of it. So it’s like a storm and it’s not like a storm, if that makes sense.”

Caramelinda furrows her brows. “That sounds… tiring.”

Lazuli lets out a laugh. It comes out more bitter than she intends. “Ha! Yes. Very.”

“So why do it?” Caramelinda asks. “There’s plenty of other magic to study, isn’t there? Why not let the future be?”

Caramelinda is _very_ good at asking challenging questions. Lazuli knows the answer to this one, at least, even if she’s never had to articulate it before. “I’m the only one who can. There are things that are going to happen – or could happen – that if I can try and prevent, or prepare for – ” She trails off, trying to find the right words. “If I can use this to help Candia,” she says, slowly, “To help the people I care about – it’s not even really a choice. I have to.”

Cara looks at her, an expression that Lazuli can’t quite decipher on her face. “There is a choice, Lazuli. I think you’ve made the brave one.”

“Oh.” Lazuli says. “Well. Thank you.” She picks back up the book she was using for the lesson and flips back through to find the right page. “Returning to shielding spells –“

“Actually,” Cara says, standing. “I’ve had enough of magic, for today. It’s lovely outside, we should do something _fun_.”

Lazuli blinks. “But the lesson –“

“Can wait.” Cara says. “Lazuli, you work very hard – too hard. You deserve to relax sometimes.” She comes to the other side of the table, offers Lazuli her hand with a bright smile. “Let’s enjoy the present while we’re in it, shall we?”

Lazuli looks at the books in front of her, the stack of papers to her left, notes the building pressure in the base of her skull that indicates an incoming vision. She has so much work to do: she has to protect herself, protect Candia, protect Cara.

But. She can’t remember the last time she allowed herself to have fun. Allowed herself to rest, even. Surely she can take a small break, for Caramelinda’s sake, if not her own.

“Alright,” she says, and, surprising even herself, takes Cara’s hand.

***

Lazuli falls almost without noticing it.

It’s Caramelinda leading her to bed when she’s so tired from studying she can barely open her eyes, telling her that she needs rest or she’ll be no good to anyone, and Lazuli having the first dreamless sleep she’s had in years –

It’s Lazuli catching Caramelinda crying one day because she’s homesick for Castle Merengue and the borderlands between Candia and Fructera, and clearing her schedule to teleport her home despite the risk just to make her happy –

It’s them making eye contact over the banquet table when whatever nobles happen to be around make tedious small talk and knowing from each other’s expressions that they’re thinking the same thing and it all feels a little less dull –

It’s Cara taking the time to get to know each of her sisters, talking court politics with Sapphria and theology with Citrina and battle strategy with Rococoa and fighting techniques with Amethar, asking questions when she doesn’t understand and fitting right in with the chaos and the prank wars and the love –

And it’s the fact that these moments only seem to happen to her once. It takes Lazuli a while to notice the difference, but the echoes that rock her constantly, _déjà vu_ as the Fructeran diviners of old called it, often come to a halt when Cara is around. It scares her, a little. She never knows exactly what’s going to happen to her, but she’s seen enough variations of the future that normally when she arrives in the present it’s like slipping on a well-worn coat. With Cara, it seems anything could happen; every second untouched, each moment an act of discovery.

How terrifying. How wonderful. How lucky she is, to love a being so precious that her presence demands Lazuli remain in the present.

***

(By the time she catches herself using the word love, it’s already far too late.)

***

They marry in the midst of a summer storm, the day before news reaches Castle Candy that Count Tomaté has laid claim to the Vegetanian throne. No one but Lazuli knows this, of course, and she keeps her anxieties to herself. There will be plenty of time for anger and mourning and fear in the coming weeks: she wants this day to be joyous, for Caramelinda’s sake, for her family’s sake. They deserve something to hold on to.

The evening before the wedding, she sits in front of the mirror scribbling notes in her journal whilst Citrina and Sapphria arrange her hair.

“There, all done,” Citrina says, with satisfaction. “What do you think?”

“Lovely,” Lazuli murmurs, eyes still trained on her notes.

“You didn’t even look, Laz,” Sapphria whines. “Come on, it’s your wedding day. You can stop studying for five minutes.”

Lazuli rolls her eyes. She’s not even getting married today, just attending another ceremonial dinner that she doesn’t understand the point of, but she relents and puts the book down before Citrina and Sapphria start pouting. She looks in the mirror, and blinks in surprise. She looks different. _Good._ The two of them have woven little sherbet daisies into a crown around her head, and her braids hang loose instead of the usual bun she wears.

“Oh. It looks… I look… thank you,” she says, oddly choked up.

Sapphria grins, wrapping her arms around Lazuli’s shoulder. “You look fucking _good_ , Laz. Caramelinda’s gonna swoon on the altar tomorrow.”

Lazuli blushes. “Do you think?”

“Absolutely,” Sapphria says, and kisses her on the cheek. “Alright, I’m going to go wrestle Amethar and Rococoa into something that isn’t armour. I love you, good luck, don’t embarrass me.”

“Why would I –” Lazuli begins to ask, but Sapphria has already darted off.

“Don’t listen to her, she’s only teasing,” Citrina says, coming to sit beside Lazuli on the little bench next to the vanity. “I’m glad you like the hair. We’ll do something similar for the ceremony, then.” She pats Lazuli’s hand. “How are you feeling, about tomorrow?”

Lazuli hums. Outside, the candy-floss clouds that have been threatening to burst all morning finally break, and big drops of sugary cola begin to patter down on the castle rooftops. If Lazuli believed in such things, she would think it was an ill-omen. “I am – apprehensive,” she admits.

As much as it might shock the gossiping nobles of Candia and beyond, out of all her siblings she is perhaps closest to Citrina. Citrina spends nearly as many hours in the library as the chapel, and whilst she likes to tut over some of the books Lazuli reads and Lazuli in turn pokes fun at the religious texts Citrina studies, the hours of companionable silence – and forming a united front against their louder, teasing siblings – have forged a special bond between them. Lazuli answers Citrina honestly, when she can.

Citrina smiles, gentle, kind, saintly. “That’s to be expected. It’s a big day. What exactly are you nervous about?”

Lazuli absent-mindedly fiddles with the feathered end of her quill. “All of it. Everything.” She looks up at her sister. “Love.”

“Oh, Lazuli,” Citrina says. “There’s nothing to be worried about. Even Amethar can tell Cara’s head over heels for you.”

“What?” Lazuli stands up too quickly and knocks ink over the table. She swears, scrabbling to retrieve her notes the puddle. “Did she say – what – how do you know?”

Citrina waves her hand and the mess tidies itself up, not daring to stay imperfect in the presence of the Bulb’s chosen. “Lazuli, the only thing more obvious than how in love Cara is with you is how in love you are with her.”

“I’m not –” Lazuli cuts herself off, and swears again.

“What’s the matter?” Citrina says. “You’re marrying someone you love. I thought you’d be happy.”

“I-“ Lazuli sits down, heavily, on her bed. “I’m not – I shouldn’t be. I _can’t._ ”

Outside, lightning crackles, echoed a second later with the low rumbling of thunder. Lazuli closes her eyes. She knows – she’s seen the future. War is coming, and with it death and terror and pain and loss, the details yet to be written but the story already taking brutal shape. It is – will be – like the thunder and lightning: the terrible flash of violence, and the inevitable tragedy that follows, intangible but just as devastating. And Lazuli knows that she will be in the heart of the storm, has known and kept the secret close for as long as she’s been studying magic. She’s tried so hard to protect everyone, not just from the future but from _her_ , from all the timelines where she does not live to see the Candia she’s fighting for. She doesn’t want to hurt them more than she has to.

(But. But. Lazuli has given, will give, everything for this future, everything. Just this once she wants to be selfish, to put duty and honour and magic aside, and go out into the rain uncaring of when the lightning will strike.)

Citrina is quiet for a moment. “Love is not without risk,” she says softly, cutting to the heart of the problem as always. “But that’s the beauty of it, Laz. You both choose to take that risk together. And when things go wrong – and they will, because that’s what life is – you can work it out together.”

Lazuli sniffs. “Do you think?”

“I know,” Citrina says, leaning over to take her hand. “And I’ve never seen a problem you haven’t been able to solve. With Cara, you’ll be practically unstoppable.”

“Well, that’s certainly true,” Lazuli murmurs.

Citrina laughs. “Humble as ever, I see.” She squeezes Lazuli’s hand. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s a little late to be worrying about this. Cara’s too far gone.”

Lazuli heaves a deep sigh. “I think it’s a little late for me, too.”

“You should tell her.” Citrina says. “Everything. Then you can work it out together.”

“Before or after we get married?” Lazuli asks wryly.

Citrina laughs again, and Lazuli could swear the candles flare up a little as she does. Having a saint as a sister is a hazard, really. “Before, if there’s time,” she says. “Oh, Laz, this is wonderful. The Bulb shines brighter when people are in love, you know. The Book of Leaves says –“

“Alright, that’s enough.” Lazuli rolls her eyes. “Don’t you have to go, I don’t know, light some candles or something?”

“Heretic,” Citrina says, amicably. “But, yes, I do have duties to attend to before tomorrow.” She too kisses Lazuli’s cheek, and then stands to leave.

“Citrina?” Lazuli says. “Thank you.”

Citrina smiles from the doorway. “You’re welcome. I love you.”

“Love you too,” Lazuli says. She’s not said that in a long time. It tastes sweet on her tongue.

“See, isn’t that easy?” Citrina says.

Lazuli laughs. “Oh, go away.”

Citrina sticks her tongue out as she leaves. Lazuli looks up to the mirror, and when Caramelinda appears in the reflection, she does not look away.

***

 _Want a break?_ Lazuli _messages_ Caramelinda four hours into the rehearsal dinner/betrothal ceremony/aristocratic bullshit.

Caramelinda doesn’t break her smile as she makes polite small talk with some minor noble from the Sugarlands, but her responding _Please_ is quite desperate.

Lazuli grins mischievously. She takes a quick scan of the room: mostly Candians and Dairy Islanders, some Fructerans, nearly all of them at the least tipsy if not outright drunk. Should be safe enough.

“Attention!” she calls, slipping a little magic into her words to amplify her voice. “Would anyone like to see a magic trick?”

The crowds murmur excitedly. Her mother leans across the table and hisses, “What are you _doing_?”

Lazuli ignores her, and takes Caramelinda’s hand. “Ready?” she says.

Caramelinda nods, and they vanish in a puff of powdered sugar.

They reappear in the outskirts of the woods outside Castle Candy. Caramelinda giggles, and then puts a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Lazuli, there were so many people there, we could get in so much _trouble_ –“

“Sapphria’s pretty good at smoothing things over, and most of them were drunk, anyway. It’ll work out.” Lazuli says. She’s feeling a little wild: after carefully calculating every choice she’s made for the past fifteen years she has cut herself loose from the future. She is untethered, weightless. Free.

Caramelinda giggles again. “Good _grief,_ the look on your mother’s face,” she says. “She’s going to be so angry.”

“Ah well,” Lazuli says. “She can’t kill me tomorrow, it’s my wedding day.”

This sends Caramelinda into fits, which sets Lazuli off too, and their laughter echoes through the quiet trees. The rain stopped a little while ago, and the air is filled with the scent of damp earth, mint-sweet and fresh, like the beginning of something new.

Eventually the laughter peters out, until it’s just the two of them breathing raggedly in the darkness. Lazuli can just make out the edges of Cara’s frame in what little moonlight filters through the treetops, which is a shame. She likes looking at Cara, especially when she’s not wearing her court mask, when she lets whatever she’s feeling play across her face. Her expressions in court are beautiful in the way a statue is beautiful, a moment frozen forever in perpetual, boring perfection: when she’s not performing, her anger sets off a tic in her forehead and her smile is crooked and everything twitches in a way that is so lovely and present and _human_.

Almost as if she can read her mind, Cara mutters something and conjures the little blue lights to surround them. Lazuli follows her lead, though she’s found that when she casts the spell the lights always come out pink for some reason. For a moment, they just stand there, watching the flickering shadows the lights cast, and then Cara says, “We’re getting married tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Lazuli says, because it’s true.

Caramelinda half-chuckles. “I know it’s probably not what you wanted. But I feel very lucky, that I get to marry someone like you.”

“Oh,” Lazuli says. Her brain is not working correctly: all the things she talked about with Citrina, all the things she needs to say, have got stuck in her throat. What comes out instead is, “Uh, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She takes a step closer. “I love you, you know,” she says, quiet but not for a second dropping her gaze. “I’ve loved you for a long time. And it’s alright that you don’t feel the same – we can just be friends who happen to be married, if you like. But I love you, and I thought you should know.”

“Oh. Uh. I don’t – I feel –“ Lazuli stops, and breathes out in frustration. Words, spoken words, at least, have never been her strong suit. Of course, _of course_ she loves Cara. She’s been fooling herself if she’s ever thought otherwise. Cara who rescued her, like a knight in a fairy tale, kindness and curiosity and determination her sword. Cara who brought her walls crumbling to the ground without casualty. Cara, who makes the risk seem worth it.

She doesn’t know how to say all that eloquently in the way Cara deserves – for that, she will need time, and paper and ink. For now, she acts on the impulse that has brought her this far tonight, and leans down to kiss Cara on the lips.

The lights around them burst in a shower of purple sparks, and Lazuli doesn’t believe in fate, has calculated and manipulated every second of the future within her reach, but there is no part of this moment that doesn’t feel somehow inevitable. All the sweeter, though, for her choosing it.

“Oh,” Cara says, breathlessly, when they break apart. “You love me?”

“I love you,” Lazuli says. “I love you, I love you, I love you. I’m sorry it took me so long to see it.”

“I love _you_ ,” Cara says, smiling. “You’re not worried about the future?”

“Not right now,” Lazuli decides. “Are you?”

“No,” Cara says. “We’ll be together when it comes.”

“Together,” Lazuli repeats, her jaw beginning to ache with how much she’s smiling. “I love you. Marry me?”

“Yes,” Cara laughs, and kisses her again.

In two days war will break out: within the month the conflict will bubble over into near every corner of Calorum and they will all be caught in the middle: in a year, two years, three... but Caramelinda is kissing her and she’s in love and all of her worries about the future melt away in the resounding brilliance of _right now_.

(The wedding ceremony is beautiful. Caramelinda looks near divine in her gown and her sisters all cry, even Sapphria, and there is dancing and cake and for some reason mugs with their faces on. But when Lazuli thinks of their wedding she thinks of the night before, giggling in the rain with lights floating around them, a quiet promise of devotion between no one but themselves and the whistling winds of Candia.

This is the foundation of their marriage: love, and magic, and how when they’re together, both feel easy.)

*** 

War comes. Their life goes onward. She gets a new ward (Sir Theo, a promising student she knows will have a part to play somewhere down the line) and tasks Cumulous with recruiting monks to the Spinning Star. (He disappears, but she gets messages of his progress every now and then, and knows he’s capable enough to take care of himself.) There’s strange news out of the Candy Mountains: even as she writes letters to her Uncle Joren, gently prodding him into rebellion whilst her sisters fruitlessly attempt to goad their father to take action, she becomes aware of a malevolent force gathering power beyond him. The Sugar Plum Fairy, straight out of a child’s tale. She could prove to be an even greater threat than the warring nations, a threat to _magic_ , and Lazuli devotes what little spare time she has to gathering information to her, factoring it into her calculations for the future.

In short, she’s busy, but she’s happy, too, with Cara by her side. There is good and there is bad, but what she finds she loves most is the ordinary: the quiet nights in bed, reading together in the library, getting ready in the mornings, bickering lightly over things that don’t matter – a thousand moments she never thought she’d get to have, never even saw coming.

“What do you think we’ll do, after the war?” Caramelinda asks her one day. Lazuli has a rare day off and they were supposed to go hiking up the Cola River, but they’d gotten a little, ah, _distracted_. They’re lying together in bed, Cara nestled into Lazuli’s side as Lazuli traces lazy circles down her back.

Lazuli turns and wriggles down so that she’s face to face with Cara. “First,” she says, getting into lecture mode, “We establish within the new concord between the nations that magic is a protected force, and magic-users should be free from persecution by the Bulbian Church –“

Cara rolls her eyes. “I’ve heard your fifty-three point plan for a free and fair Calorum at least five times,” she says, with a smile. “What do _you_ want to do, Lazuli? What do you want for us?”

“It’s fifty-seven points,” Lazuli says, deflecting. It’s not that she’s not thought about it, it’s just that it’s so far off and so, _so_ unlikely that she’s shut it up somewhere in the back of her cluttered brain, for fear that looking at it will chase it away. “I think, once it’s all over… I’d like to teach magic,” she says. “To as many people as I can. A school, maybe.”

“Well, you’re an excellent teacher,” Cara says. “Headmaster Lazuli has a nice ring to it, I think.”

Lazuli smiles. “I like it.”

“A school…” Caramelinda ponders. “I wouldn’t mind being a teacher, you know. Or maybe I could help organise classes and things, on the side. That sounds nice.”

“Whatever you want,” Lazuli says, and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You’re certainly scary enough to be a teacher.”

Cara pokes her. “Rude.”

“Accurate.” Lazuli corrects. “What else do you want to do?”

Cara hums. “Oh, I don’t know. Rococoa will need help running the kingdom. I’d like to look into more representation in politics from the nobles – and, really the non-nobles – from the different border regions of Candia. They’ve been impacted a great deal by the war.”

Lazuli nods. “An excellent idea. I’ll incorporate it into the plan.”

“Of course, you will.” Cara says fondly. “What else… learn more magic, improve access to education, start a family, travel more around Candia – “

“A family?” Lazuli interrupts. “Do you want that?”

“Well, why we got married, isn’t it?” Cara says, looking up. “To produce an heir. But I’ve always wanted kids. Don’t you?”

Lazuli thinks of the twin girls with Cara’s eyes that run in and out of her vision sometimes. “I would, uh. I would love that.”

Cara squeezes her hand. “I love you,” she says.

“I love you.” Lazuli says, and leans forward to kiss her wife.

The odds are so very, very slim. But Lazuli will give anything – anything – to bring them into existence.

***

Ever so slowly, all too quickly, the future narrows.

Their mother dies: it does not hurt any less for the fact she saw it coming. At the funeral, for the first time in their lives, all the Rocks sisters are silent. Lazuli watches them throw chocolate dirt in the grave dizzily, overwhelmed with the images of three, four, five coffins piled on top of each other, not knowing which belongs to which member of her family.

Cara leans over to take her hand, drawing her back to the one coffin, the one grave. She closes her eyes and thinks, wearily, _I cannot save us all_.

Still, Lazuli tries, shuts herself up in the library, looking desperately for a way around the future she knows is unavoidable. But it’s all so _useless_ , all her research into immortality, all her magic, all her brains, all crumbling in the face of fate. She has nothing more to create, nothing left to give, except the one big thing.

The future is so bright, now. Blinding. She cannot see what lies beyond it, and nor can she look away.

***

It’s still dark out when Lazuli rises. If she’s counted right – and she knows she has – this day will be her last. If she closes her eyes and listens, she can almost hear the clock ticking down, down, down. Hours. Minutes. Seconds.

She keeps her eyes open. Cara’s sleeping, and Lazuli watches her chest rise and fall, wishing she had more time to look at her, to love her. She hasn’t told Cara, but she thinks Cara knows. She’d been away on a spy mission with Sapphria - a mission they’d fought bitterly over, Cara sick and tired of not being able to help, Lazuli beset with fears of a hundred ways it could go wrong – when Lazuli had finally given up frantically searching through her notes and spellbooks, and set, instead, to her final task. Cara had come home to an attentive, melancholy Lazuli, who had taken her around all their old favourite places: her great-grandmother’s gardens, the astronomy tower, the woods beyond the Sugar-Plum Grove. Neither of them has acknowledged it, but all their actions feel heavy, deliberate, weighed down by looming grief.

Despite the years of foresight, she still feels bitter as she presses a kiss to a sleeping Caramelinda’s forehead as she goes to leave. But, she thinks, but, but: how lucky she is to have had this.

Caramelinda stirs as she is halfway through the door. “Lazuli? Are you going?”

Lazuli halts, shoulders stiffening. “I didn’t want to wake you,” she says, her back to her wife.

“I wanted you to wake me,” Caramelinda says, sitting up, rubbing her eyes. “I want – I wanted to say goodbye.”

There’s a slight shake in her voice as she speaks, and Lazuli wants nothing more than to return to bed and promise she’ll never leave, ever, she’ll stay by Cara’s side forever.

“Goodbye,” she makes herself say instead, and leans down to kiss her, sweetness and sorrow all tangled on their lips.

Cara grabs her hand as they break apart. “Are you – do you have to go?” she asks, scanning her eyes desperately across Lazuli’s face.

“There’s no other way,” she says, quietly. “If there was, Cara –”

“I know. I know.” Cara heaves a deep, teary breath. “I had to ask.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Cara reaches up her hand to Lazuli’s face, wipes the tears gathering in her eyes. “My love. I chose this. I chose you, and if I could go back knowing what I know now, I would choose to love you again. Okay?” She kisses Lazuli’s forehead. “If you have to go, go without regret. I promise I have none.”

How lucky she is, indeed. “I chose you too,” she says, stumbling over the words, voice thick. “I think – I knew I wouldn’t have much time. But what I had I wanted to give to you.”

Cara nods shakily. There’s a knock on the door, loud and final as the executioner’s axe thudding into the wood.

“Archmage?” Sir Theobald says.

Cara looks and Lazuli. Lazuli looks at Cara. The moment hangs heavy in the air. _The last time._

“I love you.” Lazuli says, because that’s all she has left to say.

“I love you too." Cara says, eyes shining with tears.

They kiss once more, and then Lazuli goes to die.

***

She sends everyone away. Sir Theo, loyal to the last, insists on accompanying her through the battlefield, but eventually she sends him off too. This will hurt him, but he has work yet to do. There are some people in the future he needs to protect.

Lazuli stands alone, invisible, in the midst of the battle. Around her the armies of Candia, Fructera, Ceresia wage their bloody war. Somewhere in their midst are Amethar and Rococoa. She’s not one for prayer, knows what she’s about to do will speak louder than one anyway, but she hopes they’ll be safe. She hopes (dreams, wishes) for a lot of things. A free Candia, a world without war, a world where magic can breathe easily, a world her nieces (not daughters, she understands now, loves them all the same) can grow up knowing peace. A world where Caramelinda will live. These are worth giving her life for.

She breathes in, out. This will require all of her strength, all of her magic, but she has made the calculation: she can risk one more spell, before the last.

(There are so many things to say, but never enough time.)

 _There is no Candia without you,_ she whispers to the breeze, back to Cara. _Look after them for me._

Cara’s response is quick: _I will. I love -_ and the rest is cut off as the storm that has been crackling her whole life bursts into existence above her. The lightning, brighter than the Bulb itself, shears the sky in two: it strikes the ground as a thousand piercing arrows, tearing the battlefield and her body into shreds.

The last thing Lazuli Rocks hears before she dies is the rumbling of thunder.

***

In the realm of the Sugar Plum Fairy, everything is frozen in its perfect, icy place. But the Archmage has one last trick up her sleeve, one last desperate act of experimental magic.

Lazuli splits, fractalizes: shards of her consciousness go spinning through time, backwards, forwards, sideways. She sees Amethar and Rococoa roaring at her crumpled body, her nieces running through the streets of Dulcington, a third niece looking out across the Dairy Sea; she sees, one by one, her sisters die, her father too, each another arrow thudding into her back; she sees battles and funerals and Saint’s Days and weddings and –

And Caramelinda. Caramelinda dressed in black, and white again, weeping as she holds her daughters for the first time. Caramelinda in quiet moments, alone in the library studying with a frown on her face, curled up in bed, sat at a desk with candles burning low and weariness written in the hunch of her shoulders, smiling fondly as Lazuli gets caught up in an explanation. Every moment they have shared, and every moment they will not.

Lazuli’s body remains under the Sugar Plum Fairy’s control - but her mind is free, is everywhere at once, present, past, future. She can pick and choose her moments carefully, guide them from beyond the grave, bring about the Candia she has long dreamt of.

And she can see Cara again. It is not the same. It hurts, deeply, to see her again only to be ripped away over and over, and though she will get used to it (is, in fact, already familiar with the bittersweet ache) she mourns the fact that every moment must be a moment of parting.

But every moment is a meeting, too. A chance to say _hello, again_ , _my love._

***

(At the very beginning, a girl in a pink dress curtsies before a girl in blue.

“I’m Caramelinda,” she says.

“Lazuli,” the other girl says, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Do you want to dance?” Caramelinda asks.

Lazuli smiles for the first time all night, all her many lives, and takes Cara’s hand.)

She still has work to do, she knows. The Sugar Plum Fairy’s wings cast a long shadow over Candia, and the war still rages, and her family is in danger, but for now (whenever that is) Lazuli Rocks stays to dance with the love of her life. She’s got nothing but time.

**Author's Note:**

> wow thanks for reading that truly monstrous fic! hope you liked it!!
> 
> some notes:  
> \- i really like the idea of cara as an innate spellcaster since i don't believe her class was ever confirmed - in this fic she's a college of eloquence bard who multiclasses into wizard, but i think it would also be cool if she was a sorceror. all her little speeches to lazuli are her giving bardic inspiration <3  
> \- if it wasn't clear, the reason that lazuli didn't see futures with cara is because she was deliberately not looking out of fear, not because cara is like special or chosen or whatever. once lazuli accepts her love for cara she starts appearing more in her visions.  
> \- i gave up trying to make this fit the canon timeline halfway through writing, as you can probably tell. in my head lazuli and cara are engaged for like a year and then have two or three years married before her death.  
> \- quickly want to shout out this caramazuli playlist by @nonbinarywithaknife on tumblr, which i no joke listened to so much whilst writing this that i accidently pavlovian trained myself to open my word doc when the first song came on. check it out! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zfxSZPXcBnMEqsWSywQI3?si=a2_lRfs7RRq83MuEVyWfbw  
> -if people like this i might write a follow up from cara's perspective, but probably not any time soon given how long it took me to write this. give me 3-5 business months and we'll see lmao
> 
> as always, comments and kudos appreciated, and you can find me on tumblr @kristenbeeapples!


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